Comments On ‘Technological Choices in Ceramic Production’, Archaeometry, 42(1), 1–76, 2000

Sillar, B., and Tite, M. S., 2000, The challenge of ‘technological choices for materials science approaches in archaeology, Archaeometry 42 , 2–20. Livingstone Smith, A., 2000, Processing clay for pottery in northern Cameroon: social and technical requirements, Archaeometry 42 , 21–42. Sillar, B., 2000, Dung by preference: the choice of fuel as an example of how Andean pottery production is embedded within wider technical, social, and economic practices, Archaeometry 42 , 43–60. Pool, C. A., 2000, Why a kiln? Firing technology in the Sierra de los Tuxtlas, Veracruz (Mexico), Archaeometry 42 , 61–76.     

Social Boundaries and Networks in the Diffusion of Innovations: a Short Introduction

This short introduction briefly recalls how sociological theories and formal methods for social networks can help to interpret diffusion processes of ancient cultural traits. It also provides a presentation of the selected papers. These papers focus not on the ways archaeological data can be represented in a relational format, but on the potential of specific sociological network-related models to gain insights into the underlying mechanisms of diffusion processes. The necessity to develop more fine-grained information to reconstruct ancient local social networks is underlined while three aspects of the diffusion process are explored: (a) situations in which cultural practices are not borrowed in spite of contact between groups; (b) situations in which cultural practices are adopted; and (c) situations in which cultural practices in one group are copied by people from another group. All of them take inspiration from sociological studies of diffusion processes through networks, although to different extents.     

‘A house for dead people’: memory and spatial transformation in Red Location,South Africa

One of several new South African post-apartheid memory projects, the Red Location Museum in New Brighton, Port Elizabeth opened in 2006, in a century-old informal settlement with strong histories of resistance. The museum was intended to acknowledge the area’s contribution to the liberation struggle, and contribute to dismantling apartheid urban geographies by producing a tourist and cultural economy. However, the project was highly contested from its inception by residents who felt that the priority for the neighbourhood should be housing and service delivery. Major housing-related protests erupted on the museum’s doorstep between 2003 and 2005, and in late 2013 the new cultural precinct was closed down indefinitely. This paper examines the politics and controversies surrounding the Red Location developments between 1997 and 2013, using this case study to consider the ways in which the protests around the museum are rooted in historical and political histories made visible through residents’ radical claiming of ownership of the museum building. The Red Location example offers a useful consideration of the complexities of applying notions of ‘participation’ and ‘community ownership’ in practice in fraught situations where major change is needed, and makes a case for the thorough historicisation of contemporary conflicts over development and spatial change.     

Evaluating socio-economic change in the Andes using oribatid mite abundances as indicators of domestic animal densities

Tracking social and economic change in Andean societies prior to the invasion of the Spanish has always been a difficult task, especially given that these cultures failed to develop any form of written record. Here we present a new method of reconstructing socio-economic shifts in a rural setting from the analysis of the frequency of oribatid mite remains present in a sedimentary lake sequence. Oribatid mites are soil-dwelling microarthropod detritivores, some of which inhabit areas of grassland pasture. One of the primary controls governing their abundance in such habitats is the level of animal dung present. We propose that past fluctuations in mite remains can be related to the density of domestic animals using the area of pasture and, by extension, may provide a proxy for broad-scale social and economic change through time. To test this hypothesis, we analysed a high-resolution (∼6 years) mite record from a sequence of well-dated sediments from Marcacocha, a climatically sensitive lake site located close to an important Inca trading route across the Andes. The timing and magnitude of mite fluctuations at Marcacocha since the 1530s show remarkable correspondence with a series of major, well-documented socio-economic shifts in the region relating to political and climatic pressures. This provided the confidence to extend the record back a further 700 years and reconstruct changes in domestic herbivore densities for a period of time that lacks historical documentation and thereby infer changes in human occupation of the basin. In particular, high mite abundances appear to correspond clearly with the rapid rise and fall of the Inca Empire (c. AD 1400–1532). We argue that small lake basins such as Marcacocha may be particularly suitable for obtaining continuous oribatid mite records and providing the possibility of reconstructing large herbivore abundances in the Andes and elsewhere.